Copper Tea Pot? (Probably a dumb question)

So, a few months ago, my boyfriend found me this awesome copper teapot at a local thrift store. Picked up some copper cleaner, and (we figured) cleaned it out good. However, each time I’ve tried to boil water in it, it always smells odd and I’m not brave enough to even try tasting it.

I’ve also heard from a few people, even though I really doubt its true, that copper teapots are “just for decoration” and not meant to make actual tea…which would be incredibly dumb.

First, you can definitely use it as long as it really is copper and not… I dunno… something like copper coated galvanized steel.

If you used copper cleaner, it’s good to go. What kind of smell does it have? I’ve never used copper cookware but I would imagine it’s just a metallic smell?

Also, copper will darken with use but you can make it shiny again if you want: use equal parts flour, salt, & vinegar and scrub. Or you can use ketchup. Or a lemon. Essentially you just need to use something acidic to remove tarnish. BUT since you used a copper cleaner, I would imagine that took care of that.

Oh and take a picture of it and upload it to imgur or something so we can see what it looks like.

Copper kettle does intrinsically have a metallic smell and there is basically no way to remove it, since it’s from the copper. So in ancient China, copper is one of the least favored materials for holding tea water, and it was used more for wine. But Tibetans use some copper wares and I’ve seen copper being used in other milk tea cultures such as Mongolian.